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Monday  7  January

Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father. ... Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet has thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.  John 14, 8. 9.

Many painters have depicted God as a person, generally as an aged man. Maybe they thought of Daniel’s description of the ancient of days (ch. 7, v.9) in spite of the particular viewpoint of that passage. God has no physical form, nobody: He is spirit. Moses said that the Israelites “heard the voice ... but saw no similitude” (Deuteronomy 4, 15). Then again, God told Moses: “There shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33, 20). He is the invisible God “whom no man hath seen nor can see” (1 Timothy 6, 16). Yet if He had not revealed Himself, we could not know Him: “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1, 18).

Christ is the image of the invisible God. An image is a faithful representation of a person or an object, whereas a similarity only reproduces certain characteristics. An image is created to be seen. It presents something which, for some reason, itself remains invisible. Since God is invisible to the whole of creation, it is the Son of His love who reveals Him. The Son, who is ever in the bosom of the Father, who is God and became Man without ceasing to be God, makes God known in all His ways and character, indeed in His very being.

Only-begotten, He revealed
Thyself unto Thy praise.
The father, until then concealed,
Was seen  in all His ways.